German soldiers complete dog tag blank, unissued September 1915 pattern recovered 2014 from pit of buried equipment near the village of Gueudecourt this area was defended by the 2nd Royal Bavarian Division during the battles of September 1916 on the Somme

Possibly due to the huge size of the German Army in the field, it was becoming clear that, (along with the difficulties of identifying dead and wounded soldiers purely from the details on the 1878 tags (whereby a certain amount of cross-referencing with records would be necessary)) tags were having to be re-issued at an increasing rate due to regimental or even company transfers. It was therefore decided, in September 1915 (following on from Regulation 72822-V-B1 of the Prussian War Ministry issued on 13th August 1915 which, in turn, followed on from a proposal by the Prussian and Bavarian high command on June 16th 1915*), to issue a larger pattern disc upon which it would be possible to include more personal detail (preventing the need for as much record checking) and also have room to strike out old unit details and replace them with the new.

(* the discs proposed in June 1915 were rectangular in shape, approximately 7cm by 5.5cm in size and contained the same detail as the 1878 disc but with the addition of the soldiers name. Never actually on official issue, a large number of these discs were manufactured and trialled, however, mainly seeing service on the Eastern Front.)

These new discs were still oval, but now measured approximately 7cm by 5cm and contained the soldier’s name, date of birth and home town details along with his regimental details. From this point, recruit unit details may also be found (located on the obverse of the disc), but these were sometimes blanked out by the time the soldier was allocated to his active service unit. Details of the soldier’s present and previous units may also be found (officially blanked or “lined out” following subsequent transfers) on the reverse.